Rethinking George W. Bush

I did not vote for George W. Bush. I campaigned against him and was highly critical of his policies throughout his eight years as President of the United States of America. I felt his decision to invade Iraq was worse than ill advised, I felt it was an act of aggression against a nation which obviously hated us but did not have the ability to do us any lasting damage. I felt we were led into that war under false pretenses and that we were told that that nation was responsible for the attack against America on September 11, 2001. It was not. There was no credible information ever tying Iraq to the terrorist attacks against us on 9/11. Our invasion of that country placed us in league with other invader nations such as Germany and Japan, a status we should have avoided at all cost.

The policies of President Bush, from his tax cuts to his Patriot Act to his imprisonment of persons deemed to be terrorists without any kind of due process, were all matters with which we could disagree vociferously. I have no problems whatsoever of expressing disagreement for those positions. However, I am having to rethink some of my criticisms regarding President Bush.

Mr. Bush ran for president on the theory that he was a compassionate Christian. This was a good slogan and I rather doubted it was any more than simply a slogan. In observing his conduct as governor of the state of Texas, I saw very little evidence of any kind that he was a compassionate person. The Christianity that had been forced on us during the Reagan/Bush years and even by political opposition during the Clinton years was a harsh, judgmental and destructive Christianity. Mr. Bush wanted to embrace those people who had converted Jesus into a Republican and he wanted to save their votes. But he also wanted to temper those views by calling himself compassionate in order to make himself a little more tolerable to a more liberal audience.

Early in his administration, Mr. Bush, working with Democrats in the Congress, signed into law the No Child Left Behind. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the passage of this law and whether one does or does not find fault with its implementation, one can conclude that it was entered into with good intent and purposes.

Also early in his administration, Mr. Bush, again working with Democrats in the Congress, passed the Prescription Drug Act which was intended to help senior citizens pay for their prescription drugs. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the passage of this Act and whether one does or does not find fault with its implementation, one can conclude that it was entered into with good intent and purposes.

With the attack by the terrorists on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington DC, and the failed attack on the White House or the Capitol, on September 11, all of his efforts to do things with good intent and purposes were set aside and he had to focus on the one thing that we feared the most-another terrorist attack. His advisers took advantage of this opportunity to lead him down a path of aggression and military expansionism which could bring pleasure to their lives for reasons that only they would ever be able to understand.

It seemed that in the last two years of his administration he tried to bring himself back to that compassionate Christianity that he had run on in 2000. But he was never in control of events after that. Bad people influenced him and events controlled him. And now, after being removed from his presidency by nearly 2 years, I find that I am having to reevaluate my thinking of him. Perhaps in his heart he really did want to be a compassionate person after all.